


Blue, Pt. II

by alouette_des_champs



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Infidelity, POV Second Person, Pining, Sexual Content, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22036828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: She has never said so in so many words, but it is clear enough to you that she comes to your place to hide out. She leaves her own house, her family land, everything she’s built, and hunkers down under your homemade quilt, somewhere her husband won’t look for her.
Relationships: Alex/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Leah/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Blue, Pt. II

**Author's Note:**

> POV Leah's perspective. I'm not sure if this will stand alone or not yet. 
> 
> Title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-KDFZ_44Rc

“You’re staring again,” Elliott mutters, nudging you with his elbow. You tear your eyes away from the dance floor, or, rather, the bare boards near the Stardrop’s fireplace where people sometimes dance. It’s nearing the end of the night. The woman you are in love with is out there draped around her husband, her head pillowed on his broad shoulder, her arms locked around his neck. He’s swaying her back and forth with an unsurprising lack of rhythm. You hate the way his hands look on the small of her back. You know what those hands can do.

Elliott figured out that you were sleeping with her in record time. He knows you too well, plus he has that inquisitive, relentless writer’s mind. Everyone else in town seems to think of you as some kind of ethereal forest nymph, subsisting solely on foraged plants and devoting yourself body and soul to art, but he knows the truth. You’re just trying to survive. You are trying to make anything work making. Living by yourself in the woods can be crushingly lonely.

You and the farmgirl had been pretty good friends before her wedding. She’d stop by once or twice a week to bring you some fresh produce and catch up. You’d had a little crush on her, sure, but you had known it would never come to anything. You had contented yourself with her companionship. You never really talked much with Alex. Your impression of him was always that he was not very bright and maybe a little bit of an asshole, but after she had started dating him, you had assumed that there must be more to him than met the eye. After all, she was smart and brave and kind. She wouldn’t choose someone who wasn’t all of those things, too.

After their wedding, after Alex moved into the farmhouse, her visits to your cottage became more and more frequent. She has never said so in so many words, but it is clear enough to you that she comes to your place to hide out. She leaves her own house, her family land, everything she’s built, and hunkers down under your homemade quilt, somewhere her husband won’t look for her. 

The two of you don’t talk about it, but you’re familiar with the coded way she talks about her marriage, the excuses she makes. You fled here from the city to escape this very nightmare, but here it is again, the same trauma playing out all over her body. It won’t matter if you tell her to leave him—she won’t. She can’t. There’s nowhere for her to go.

“Something has got to give,” Elliott announces in his usual lofty tone, as if making a grand proclamation atop a mountain. “This is eating you up.” 

You put your finger to your lips and shush him. You glance covertly around the bar, but nobody is paying any attention to the two of you. It’s Friday night, and the Stardrop is full to capacity with couples and small groups of friends. The cozy, relaxed atmosphere usually makes you feel cheerful, even hopeful, but tonight you just feel full of dread and Gus’ cheap beer. “What do you want me to do, Ell?” 

“I don’t know, frankly. But this is not your mess to clean up.” He sips his wine pointedly, raising his well-maintained eyebrows at you in that bitchy way of his. 

“He could kill her.” Saying it out loud gives you a chill. He shakes his head ruefully.

“You can’t make her leave him.”

“I can be a safe place for her until she’s ready.”

“It’s not healthy for either of you, what you’re doing.” You know he’s right, but you don’t know what to do about it, so you set your face and sit back in your chair.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” You glance over at the two of them again. Alex is whispering something in her ear, and she’s smiling, that daring grin she gets when she’s about to do something stupid. You hate to imagine the scene when they get home, when they start arguing, when the happy-drunk wears off. 

It had started with a bottle of her plum wine, with her combing her work-roughened fingers through your hair, marveling at how thick it is, the colors that the sun brings out. You don’t remember who kissed who first. All you remember is her lying on top of you, one of her muscular thighs pressed between your legs, hot as a deadly fever, her mouth plush against yours. You remember being surprised at how small and lean her body is under the shapeless work clothes she wears most of the time. You remember the delightfully deep noises she made when you sank down between her legs and parted her with your tongue.

Guilt drove her away for about a week after that, but by the next weekend, she was back on your couch, wrapped in a quilt, reaching for you.

“Are you sure?” you’d asked, cradling her face in your hands, tracing her cheekbones with your thumbs. “We don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything.”

She’d closed her eyes, leaning into your touch. “I’m sure,” she whispered.

She glances over at you on her way out of the saloon, hand-in-hand with Alex. Her face softens into a mingled expression of affection and guilt. She waves. You wave back. You’re certain that you look stricken.

“Leah…” Elliott murmurs. You hate that you can hear pity coloring his voice. Even your best friend thinks you’re pathetic.

“Walk me home?” you say, standing up abruptly.

The two of you walk back to your cottage in silence. After he says goodnight to you at your door, you go immediately to your work table without even taking off your boots or your coat. You are so full of anger and sadness and grief that you feel like you could kill someone. You channel that useless energy into your hands where they come into contact with clay, viciously jabbing into it with your thumbs. You think about the way you always place your palms gently over her bruises and scrapes as if you can heal her by touch. You try to imagine your hands possessing that kind of power, the power to change things that have been set in stone for longer than you can imagine.

You torture the clay into the rough shape of a body without a head, splayed in a position that could be passion, could be death. Legs splayed, arms resting softly on the belly. You can work in the fine details some other time. It’s so late that it’s almost morning. The rush of the stream outside is already being joined by the first traces of birdsong.

After you left the city, you thought you would never fall in love again. You are certain that you’re not lucky or special enough for there to be a third time. This is it.


End file.
